It's all rubbish, ain't it?

(title stolen from the Fast Show. Rubbish!)

I'm always one to have a bit of a giggle at my Mum for playing the lottery every week - she has played it every week for as long as I can remember, usually 3 tickets each time. I usually take the Dr. Cox (from Scrubs) approach of telling her that "I've already burned a pile of money this morning, so I've got none spare" when she asks if I'd like a ticket.

As a maths man, I could never accept the probabilities and the odds of the lottery. I've convinced myself that given the minute chance of winning the lottery, the best strategy for long-term financial gain (I suppose "gain" is the wrong word here; "stability" is probably better) is simply to pocket the money not spent on the lottery and place it in a savings account. Although at the back of my mind is this constant nag that perhaps I could be lucky and one day win big, and of course that would then erase any financial trouble or any expenditure on tickets in the past. It's a funny psychological phenomenon that when the jackpot has rolled over to a very large amount, more people enter as they genuinely believe that it could be their chance to win. In reality, the chances of winning are of course exactly the same as before. But that "what it?" still lurks in the back of the mind . . .

Websites like TopCashBack are excellent for nagging thoughts like this, as you can get cashback on purchasing lottery tickets so you don't feel so dirty (mathematically). I tried it once - £4 cashback for £5 spent, so essentially you pay for one ticket and get five chances. Unsurprisingly enough, I won a grand total of zero pounds that week.

So I was all ready to ditch my grand dreams of winning the lottery and buying myself a nice guitar, when I came across another site through TCB, called Search Lotto (http://www.searchlotto.co.uk/index.php?rid=19609). If you remember all those years ago when P2C sites were big (Pay-to-Click) - it's among similar lines. You make searches on the websites, and earn points for doing so - the unique thing about this site is that 25 searches earns you one entry to the lottery. Not quite so simple, as actually you are entered into a syndicate of 10 people - but still entered nonetheless. 10 searches a day count towards the 25 search limit, up to a maximum of 50 per week. The search is done via Yahoo, so I use it as per usual during the day to get through my 10 a day without sitting down and wasting time unnecessarily.

I think this is quite a nifty website, and now means that when mum tells me that "you have to be in it to win it" (thank you, Lotto advertising people) I can tell her that I am in it, but I've not paid anything to do so. I'm pretty sure that in the distant future I will not win big on the Lotto, but my mind rests at ease to know that I'm not spending money on it, but that slight chance of actually winning has also been taken care of by just searching a few times a day. Give it a try! You never know. (although you probably do)

(quite late edit - I noticed today that a "Mr. D from Cambridge" had won something on the lottery via this method today - unfortunately not me!)

If ever there was a time to use Twitter . . .

As I assume people know, there are currently a series of riots going on in the UK in the major cities (or more accurately, in areas of low socio-economic status in inner cities of the UK). Now, if ever, is a time to use Twitter. I've never engaged with it before, always seen it as something as a passing-by interest but nothing I'd do myself. Last night it was amazing to watch the riots unfold in real-time on Twitter - unfortunately being essentially a large server of Chinese whispers meant that the vast majority of "tweets" are just rumours. It's good that the police constabularies use the service to debunk the rumours though - Derbyshire and Leicestershire were two such services.

The people doing the rioting are lowest of the low. There is a quintessentially succinct phrase that springs to mind: "don't shit where you eat". Why is it that the rioters/looters (sorry, BBC, "protesters") are targeting small family businesses and a couple of smaller chain companies? It is heartbreaking to see family businesses that have been run for decades destroyed overnight by brainless thugs.

I think that the Met Police have done an excellent job in handling the situation. In a way, if they had gone in heavy-handed on Saturday night then it probably would have quelled things down and then resulted in a much larger uprising against police brutality. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for them, and I sympathise with that. Hopefully with the police out in force tonight, they will be more "robust" (nudge nudge wink wink) and teach the looters that the biggest, baddest gang in London is the Met police.

The Cambridgeshire police seem to have gone south to join their London pals - the only place where there may be an issue with rioting here will be Peterborough. Cambridge need not worry - its residents are decent folk, and the University folk of course tend to be somewhat more cultured and intelligent than the idiots rioting in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. I suppose that we should probably touch on race given that generally the lower-socioeconomic groups in the inner cities are minority groups; without wishing to get too deep I shall just say that the largest minority group in Cambridge is by far the Chinese. So, we will not have any problems here. Just delicious food and brilliant mathematicians!